The Edinburgh News speaks to leading figures from The Hearts Football LLC
A couple of good-natured American guys are sitting sipping espressos in a quiet neighbourhood coffee house. They are firm friends, although their names are Jordan and Jim rather than Chandler and Joey. The scene is not quite Central Perk but New Central Park is just down the road. This is the new leadership of Kelty Hearts setting up camp in rural Fife and hoping to effect a discreet revolution.
Jordan Gardner and Jim Kirks aren’t here to entertain. At least, not in the sitcom sense. They mean business, literally. Taking control of a humble third-tier Scottish football club, they talk passionately and knowledgeably about the game here despite never working in this country. They picked Kelty believing strongly that it is a club which meets their values, and that they can raise its profile to become the best part-time outfit in the country.
Gardner and Kirks are good company. They aren’t short on humour, although there’s no chance of anybody grabbing a guitar for a rendition of Smelly Cat. They are confident the Kelty fans will be singing loudly in time. Gardner is the new chairman - described as an “experienced global football executive” - who led the American consortium The Hearts Football LLC which gained an 80 per cent stake in the Fife club. Kirks is more under-the-radar but will be the first full-time chief executive office in Kelty Hearts’ history.
The obvious question is: Why Kelty? But before that, it is worth examining the backgrounds of the two friends. They have been involved in various football projects together, both in the States and abroad. Their most successful period was undoubtedly at Danish club Helsingor. Gardner was the chairman and Kirks the chief executive who oversaw a title win and promotion from Denmark’s third tier in 2020. The club finished fourth in consecutive seasons in the second tier before Gardner and Co sold their majority stake in 2022. Helsingor are now owned by Andres Iniesta’s football conglomerate.
”Some of the other projects I've been involved in, I haven't been operational,” explains Gardner. “I've been on the board, or I was a passive small investor in Swansea City so I can't take any credit for anything there. At Helsingor, we were in control of the club and had a majority stake. I was chairman and Jim was chief exec. We got the club promoted from the second division to the first in Denmark and had a lot of success. Before we left, we sold a couple of players for club-record fees. It was a really positive experience. We ended up selling the club to a Danish group who subsequently sold the club to Andres Iniesta's group. They are the owners now.”
Kirks and Gardner go back years. They first came across one another at the beautifully-named Burlingame Dragons, a now-defunct Californian team. “It was a little fourth division club, kind of similar to Kelty. We had a lot of fun, some good times,” says Kirks. “We became friends through that project and stayed in touch. We travelled around watching football. I went off and did something else after that and so did Jordan. Then he started working in Denmark and I wasn't part of it. A few months in, he called and asked if I'd be interested in helping. I said I would and four years went by. It was great. We took a break and now we are back at it again.”
Gardner interjects. “Most part-time clubs don't have a full-time CEO. We felt it was really important for someone to come in and really bring everything together at Kelty Hearts, raise the whole professionalism. Jim did an excellent job in Denmark. I convinced him to come here.”
So, back to that earlier question: Why Kelty? How did it come to pass that two unknown Americans are now running one of Scotland’s youngest and smallest professional clubs? Gardner has been on the fringes of football in this country in recent years without properly getting involved. Now he is jumping in with two feet. “I do a lot of consultancy work in football. I had done quite a bit of work in Scottish football,” he explains. “I worked with a group which looked at Livingston before the current owners came in. I worked with a group that looked at St Johnstone two or three years ago, so I got to know the ecosystem here quite well.
“One of the folks I spoke to said it would be interesting for me to look at a Scottish club. I started to look at the financial models, some of the smaller clubs started to come across my desk, and through those connections I was put in touch with Kelty. I thought it was a great story. The club has been promoted three times in five years, it's in a good location, very community-orientated. I dug into their financials and it's a club that is sustainable. I thought it could be interesting so we started conversations last summer.”
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New Central Park has a capacity of just 2,181, including 354 seats. Not a venue which will host top-flight football in the near future. That isn’t the aim here. Gardner and Kirks have modest ambitions in line with Kelty’s infrastructure. They like the humble beginnings and the quiet community feel about the place. Hence this meeting in a quiet coffee shop just a few miles from the ground. Publicity has been plentiful since announcing their group’s takeover three weeks ago, but the desire is to work quietly in the background.
“We know the limitations and we know there is a ceiling,” says Gardner. “This is not a club that's going to be playing Rangers or Celtic in the Premiership any time soon, if ever. We think we can bring in an extra layer of professionalism on top of what the folks there have already built. Can we build off what they have done? The Kelty community is growing, there are more homes being built, so can we grow with the community? A lot of people I work with all love Scotland. We want to be involved in projects we want to come and visit. Scotland is a very easy sell. I've spent a lot of time here and my wife has Scottish heritage.
“I've been very impressed with the ecosystem around Scottish football. I've looked at plenty clubs and worked with some in England who are losing £10m, £15m or £20m a year. That doesn't interest me at all. Kelty ticks a lot of boxes because we are realistic about what we can achieve. I've done this before, multiple times. I've been in the boardroom, worked at board level, been chief executive of clubs already, so I know what to expect and how to manage expectations from an emotional perspective. We need to find the right balance between running a football club as a business but also a community asset. Kelty Hearts was here years before we got here and will be here for many years after we eventually leave.
“We want to continue a sustainable financial model, which the club has, and also put a winning team on the pitch to win games and get promoted, plus enjoying cup runs. I was at the Dunfermline Scottish Cup tie recently and, even though we lost, it was a superb atmosphere. It was a really enjoyable experience. You have to take emotion out of a lot of decision-making at football clubs. You shouldn't be making emotional decisions when you're signing players or budgeting for the season. We are all passionate about football or we wouldn't be doing this. We've done this before so we are comfortable.”
Manager Tam O’Ware remains in place. With Kelty fighting relegation at the bottom of League One, there is plenty scope to improve. A potential slide into League Two wouldn’t deter the Americans from their task. They have serious plans for the future, although not in a full-time context. “Right now, no,” says Gardner. “What we've seen, and we had this with our last club in Denmark, is that once you make the jump to full-time professional football, it can be difficult to create a sustainable financial model. Your expenses go up, obviously, with full-time players and staff. It jumps to a much higher level. If your revenue goes up because you are selling players and getting promoted, that's great. A lot times, that doesn't happen.
“We want to treat Kelty Hearts as professionally as possible. For starters, Jim is here as the full-time CEO, which the club has never had. From a player performance perspective, we are really focused on how we recruit better, how we bring in data and create a good environment for the players. That's all possible within the confines of a part-time club. Over time, we will look to grow the club as revenue grows and the community grows. Hopefully we can then get promoted to higher divisions. We just want to grow sustainably. As we sit here today, the goal is to be the best part-time club in the country. There are great examples out there for us, like Arbroath and Stenhousemuir. It will take time.
“I've been blown away so far. I've been involved in a lot of football clubs all over the world and the reception has been universally positive to us coming into Kelty. Other clubs, supporters, sitting with the Scottish FA, everyone has been incredibly supportive. I wasn't necessarily expecting that because it's not always like that. I think there are a lot of factors in that. There plenty historical connections between America and Scotland, and there are a number of American owners in Scottish football already. People look at my background and say: 'Look, he's done this before. This isn't some cowboy coming in.'
“Jim will be here full-time and I'll be back and forth quite a bit. We are looking to relaunch merchandise, rebrand our recruitment and use analytics, grow sponsorship, get more people into the stadium, so there's a lot to do. Some people in the industry come in and buy a club and that's fun, and then they are on to the next thing. That's not how I operate. We were in Denmark for four years full-time. It was full speed ahead on that club. This is 100 per cent for us for the foreseeable future because it will take a lot of time and energy to get this club where we want it.”
Operating below the radar appeals greatly. “Yes, that's one of the reasons we picked Kelty,” admits Gardner. “The existing infrastructure is excellent. You have people working for the club, former players, who have been doing this for many years. We are building from that. We are bringing Jim in on a professional level to layer over the top of the existing infrastructure. There are a lot of things we like at the club and those things are not going to change.
“One of the reasons we went for Kelty is: You have a lot of larger clubs which are fun, sexy and have huge fanbases but they are losing a lot of money. The model doesn't work. I'm not talking specifically Scotland here, but across Europe. Some infrastructures don't make a lot of sense. This club has a strong infrastructure, doesn't have existing liabilities, we can build from scratch. I've built companies before outside sport. Coming to a smaller club makes sense. Americans are coming into Rangers, St Johnstone, Dundee and all that. I think that's amazing, but it's a different scale and a different level of financial risk. That's not necessarily what we're looking to do. Those clubs have built themselves up over 100 or 125 years. We like building things from scratch and we feel we can do that at Kelty.”
You will note the current buzzphrase in football has already been mentioned. Data analytics is transforming operations at different clubs in Scotland, most notably the other Hearts - Heart of Midlothian down the road in Edinburgh. Kelty will use it on a much smaller scale. One of their investors works in that area in the cash-laden NBA. The principles of American basketball recruitment will now be adapted for football in Fife. If that sounds far-fetched, wait before you judge.
“It's early days, we haven't really built that out yet,” says Gardner. “We have people in our investor group who have data analytics backgrounds. One investor does data analytics for a living in the NBA so he's helping us build out infrastructure on the data side which the club just doesn't have right now. So we are creating a recruitment model: What type of players are we recruiting? How do we use data to identify them? One issue the club has had this season is injuries. There have been loads of them. How do we use data to track the load management of the players, which the club isn't really doing all that much right now.? We are putting a lot of these processes in place from scratch. We will keep it all in-house. We're not using any third-party provider.
“A lot of ownership groups come in and say 'we're going to use data to solve all these problems'. Data can only go so far, especially at this level. I see data as a tool to help us with decision-making. If we're sitting in a room with sports staff and a manager is deciding on a player, data is going to help inform us whether we want to sign that player or not. We won't sign players just based on data. I think some clubs do that and sometimes it works. The data is a good tool for us to give us a competitive advantage over similar part-time clubs who have no usage of it, but it's not a core thing that will differentiate us either good or bad.”
If Kelty’s progress mirrors that of Helsingor, then there is the prospect of the club being sold on in future. That is very much a fluid situation. “I think that's one possibility,” says Gardner. “If we can create a really strong and sustainable model at the top of League One or in the Championship, there's no reason this can't go on indefinitely if we're all enjoying it over many years. There is no direct plan to leave any time soon. The plan is to be here for the long term and help elevate the club to the next level.”
Don’t be surprised if The Rembrandts hit ‘I’ll be there for you’ is soon blaring through the New Central Park PA system. From California to Kelty, these friends have accents as strong as their belief that they will look after their new club.
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